| Some Federal Judges More Overburdened Than Others, Study Finds |
| (14 Oct 2014)
While the number of criminal and civil filings in federal district court has risen 28 percent in the last 20 years, the number of judgeships has grown by only 4 percent.
One consequence has been an average 63 percent increase in the time from when a civil case is filed until a trial is scheduled.
But the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has also found that the increase in workloads and processing times is not evenly distributed, with some districts and judges shouldering significantly higher workloads than others. For example, judges in the Eastern District of Texas received an average of 1,510 weighted new filings each from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014 -- almost four times the national average of 388 -- making it the busiest federal court in the nation. Delaware was a close second, with 1,446 filings per judge, despite ranking third to last in criminal cases, with only 23 criminal filings per judge. To read the full report, which includes measures of civil, criminal and combined caseloads for each U.S. Judicial District, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/judge/364/In addition, TRAC has developed individual caseload measures for all active and senior district court judges -- nearly 1,000 judges in all. These figures are based on court records and millions of case-by-case data files TRAC has received as a result of 20 years of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests as well as several lawsuits to force compliance with FOIA. A new free public data tool lets you rank every federal district court judge by the number of civil cases they have pending and the number they have managed to close in the past year (current through June 2014). TRAC has also updated its popular criminal sentencing tool which tracks the number of defendants sentenced by each judge. Both tools can be found in TRAC's Judge Information Center, along with information on Immigration Court judges and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judges: http://tracfed.syr.edu/judges/interp/To keep up with TRAC, follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/tracreportsTRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/sponsor/ |
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